Source Fire: A Young Adult Fantasy (Arcturus Academy Book 5) Read online

  With a sound like a melon striking pavement and splitting open, it shot straight through his chest and out his back.

  My jaw dropped and my mind staggered to understand.

  Nero made no sound. Every flame he had ignited along the landscape and along his body instantly snuffed. Slowly, he fell to his knees, hitting the ground with an exhalation of breath. I was close enough to see splatters of what looked like black blood and coal dust along his olive skin. He looked like any ordinary man—with a hole in his chest, and the handle of a blade protruding from just beneath his armpit.

  He toppled forward into the grass and didn’t move.

  I froze in shock. I don’t know how long I stood there, weak and staring mutely at Nero’s body, half expecting him to leap up. My heart still skittered like a frightened animal, but I had seen what I had seen. The fingers of my right hand throbbed from contact with the ghost steel, but I barely noticed.

  Recovering the power of my legs, I closed the distance between us and knelt at his side. He smelled of ash and cinders, blackened flesh, creosote and charcoal. I didn’t have to touch him to know that he was dead.

  Colored light drew my attention to my right, where seven orbs hung still and silent in the air over the field. They formed a perfect circle, hovering out of reach, even for a mage. Not that I wanted to touch them, not after having seen what one of them did to Nero.

  I drew as close as I dared, picking my way through chunks of ice with my bare feet. A soft wind blew in from the sea. The car alarm had stopped at some point and everything was quiet. Quiet enough to make out soft voices coming from where I’d left Ryan: Georjie’s soft tone and Tomio’s deeper one.

  I was alone with the orbs. It was just me and them. All of them. All seven.

  They hung in the air, still and silent.

  Then they ignited, all at once and in perfect unison, with colored flames so vivid that for a moment I couldn’t draw breath. Seven floating orbs had become seven floating torches. Emerald green, deep indigo, candy-apple red, juicy orange, sun yellow, vibrant violet and rose pink. They flickered and danced, licking at the night, the shape of each orb visible at the base of each flame. They were tall, taller than me, these tongues of colored fire, and so beautiful I found myself unable look away.

  Then, like some giant invisible birthday cake set atop a turntable, the seven novel torches began to spin in a circle. Slowly at first, then picking up speed. They made arches of searing spectral light against the sky. The sound of fire whipping through the air was at first gentle, then increased to a soft roar. I was reluctant to blink, loath to miss a moment of the spectacle.

  As they spun, the space between them narrowed, and the spinning slowed again. The orbs approached one another. They were siblings who had been separated at birth and who had spent lifetimes apart, coming together for the first time in millennia. They drew close enough to touch. Sparks flew where they shared borders. They closed the gap further, and the protruding lines laced over each orb inserted themselves into the recessed lines of the others, locking all seven of them together. Like the drawing but far more spectacular. Then the individual orbs began to turn, slowly, smoothly, guided by the interlocking lines, they twisted and rolled, each rotating in its own unique way yet all at once, in a display that defied physics.

  The flames intensified, paling in color, as though bleached, until there was no color left, only a single spectacular white flame with a level of brightness and purity I should not have been able to look upon without going blind.

  But I wasn’t blind. I could see and watch it all. I watched as the white fire grew and grew. I watched until it blanked out everything and swallowed me entirely.

  18

  The White God

  A pale vacancy filled my vision and I was immediately transported into a familiar sensation, that of the bodiless skating and sliding that had carried me through the orb’s journey, what felt like a thousand years ago. I had no ability to look down or up or behind, such things were impossible without a head sitting atop a neck. I was without sensation of skin or muscle, fire or bodily aches. I was of no more substance than a thought, yet I occupied a broad and expansive world. There was no field, no sounds of the sea, none of my friends were present.

  Yet, something was present. Or someone. A sentient consciousness.

  This something or someone exuded no threat, and felt nothing like Nero. It had a cool yet curious detachment about me, that much I understood. In fact, I understood a great many things that I’d not understood before, and almost all at once.

  We had been right about some things, and wrong about others.

  This was the Source Fire. That was not debatable. The other thing that was not debatable was that never in his wildest dreams could Nero hope to absorb or claim this power for himself. This power dwarfed Nero as the sun dwarfed the Earth, as the Euphrates dwarfed a trickling brook.

  As God dwarfs man.

  How foolish he was to think he could rule the Source, and how foolish we’d been to believe him.

  Silhouettes formed in the blazing white vacancy, moving like characters against powerful backlighting floodlights in a play. Seven of them, of course. Faceless and without detail, more like stylized animation of humans than actual humans. I understood more, comprehension soaked into me like bread soaks up milk. The Source Fire pressed knowledge gently into my consciousness, rather than communicating in words, just as the fire had pressed a fraction of itself gently into its visitors all those millennia ago.

  When they had stepped into the white fire, the fire had communed with them, much the same way it was communing with me. They were to carry these tiny subdivisions of the white god within themselves for all their lives, pass it on, and use the power it gave them as they would. A stranger to our world, the white flame had arrived with a near insatiable curiosity, from a far-off place with dimensions, language, beings and wisdom that humans did not have the capacity to grasp.

  I understood that our world appeared to the white god to be a marvel of ingenuity and miracles, and the humans who occupied this world were beautiful too, beautiful, and deeply flawed. There was depth here, there were things to be understood, things to learn. Each tiny tongue of fire the white god sent into the world would collect experiences through its host, while lending them a heightened ability so potent it killed the weaker ones before the power could fully quicken within them.

  The progenitors understood this, that they were to be the fountainheads of the Source. They emerged from the belly of the white flame wholly changed, each carrying an orb in their palm, a symbol of the gift they now carried within them. No human craftsman had formed them, they’d been forged in the same moment the alliance was agreed.

  None of the original magi had refused the covenant, it had not occured to even one of them.

  When the time was right, these orbs would make their way back to each other. As surely as raindrops and sunlight conjured a rainbow, the orbs would conjure the white fire, the eighth fire. This segment of a pan-millennial data gathering process would come to an end, though it was a mere step in miles of timeline.

  The Source Fire would depart in much the same way it had come. It had been attracted by the radiant, restless grid of mysterious energy wrapping itself through and around our Earth. It was resourceful, patient, and clever, sending tiny bits of itself, not only out into the world wedged inside the hearts of this world’s most intelligent beings, but also into and through these mysterious lines. It learned not just of human nature, but of the nature of the Earth itself.

  Had I been in full possession of my emotions, I might have collapsed under the vast expanse of my new understanding. The power within me had never been mine, nor had it been Isaia’s. It had never belonged fully to any mage, even the ones who were born with it, as much as they liked to believe it did. When the white god left, as it was preparing to do, my fire would go with it. Its time here was done. This was always its plan.

  I knew also that it had heard everythin
g that had ever been said or thought by a mage, and everything said by those standing within hearing distance of a mage. It knew my conversation with Nero, knew of his threats and his bottomless greed.

  I wanted to ask, perhaps even to beg, that it leave something of itself behind. As untethered as my mind was to my own life in this moment, there was a place in the background for beloved faces. Basil, Gage, Isaia, Tomio, Dr. Price, Christy, and so many more.

  In the same instant, a new understanding was pressed into my mind, staggering me afresh.

  Above all, the white god had wanted to learn about love and hate, the way we experienced and manifested these extremes. Isaia had approached me with love, without any desire to hurt me but with a deep need to be rescued. I had loved Isaia in return, and my heart had been full of longing to help him, to put an end to his suffering. The love we shared played a part in the passing of his fire to me, and its firm rooting within me and me within it.

  By contrast, Dante had lusted after fire for power and supremacy. He’d taken Gage’s fire by force, heedless of how it would leave the former host, what it would do to him, or whether he would even survive the plundering. But it was Dante who did not survive. The fire did not quicken in him. He did not thrive.

  The Source Fire knew all of this, it had been there, observing, the whole time. It did not intervene or play a part, just watched. Learned. It was nothing if not patient. Knowing the rules of nature and super-nature would remain constant, and events would play out how they were meant to.

  Would every magus who relentlessly pursued the fire for personal gain suffer or die from that pursuit? No. This was also the way of things. It was no different in the natural world. Some who do not “deserve” to dominate, do, while others who are good and deserve better, do not thrive. It was the way of things everywhere. We viewed it as tragic, but by standing beside or within the Source Fire’s detached wisdom, I understood that both opportunity and blessing sprang from crisis. Bad things happened, and good things come from it anyway. Good things happened, and bad things come from it anyway.

  It was the way of things. Here, and beyond here.

  And then there was the matter of the adopted. We, Tomio and I, were not among the Source Fire’s offspring. For all the secrets it had shown me in this moment, I could not anticipate how it felt, if it even had feelings, or whether it might leave behind something of itself in the wake of the knowledge it had gathered. But without any doubt, as certain as life follows death and death follows life, it would depart.

  I became aware of a distant sound, like wind, swirling somewhere remote from here, but approaching, and fast. An intense pressure and suction closed in around me, pressing in on all sides, stealing all sense of air and breath and space. It was like I had been swallowed and was now working my way through the gullet of some large creature.

  Then it released and the world spun, loud and full of color.

  Blindly, I fell to my hands and knees, jarred, shocked, feeling overpacked full of perspective, the way a scarecrow’s head is stuffed haphazardly with straw. My jaw ached and my eyes blinked. All light and color vanished and the present darkness seemed fathomless. I wondered absently if the white god had taken my eyesight along with my fire.

  White sparks burst in my periphery and I collapsed, rolling onto my back. The fragrance of wet grass and mud filled my nostrils. Staring upward, a thin trail of white formed in my vision, flying through pinpricks of light.

  A shooting star. A huge one, beautiful and bright and streaking across our galaxy. Time stopped as I watched that streak of light carve a path through the firmament.

  Then it was gone.

  The sound of the sea shushing against my eardrums drew me back to myself. When the world formed a coherent picture of the field and sky at very early morning, and I knew that I was alive, I thought of Targa and the others, and rolled over. Lurching to my feet, I paused and swayed there, looking around.

  Every tree and shrub within view was bowed towards me. All of them lay completely flat against the earth, as though crushed by some monstrous steamroller, as far as I could see. Looking down revealed the same mystery repeated in the grass. Every blade was pressed toward a central point, like a massive crop circle made with a huge blunt instrument.

  And I stood at the focal point of it all.

  I looked up at the sky, almost falling over as I did so, straining for another glimpse of the white god. There was no sign. The sky hinted of sun to come with peaches and soft pinks.

  I called my friends’ names as I gaped around at the landscape, searching for anything that was not a flattened tree. Had my friends been flattened too?

  A groan made me spin and find my stride. Movement in a shallow divot drew me to a human shape. My heart stopped then jumped as I recognized Tomio. I helped him get to his feet as he stretched his jaw and rubbed the muscles there.

  “What happened? I feel like… I don’t even know. I was with Georjie and Ryan in one moment, then I was sucked across the grass. It felt like I got licked by a giant dog with a big dry tongue and then swallowed down a really tight throat, or maybe squeezed through an icing tube. I lost consciousness, but I don’t know for how long.” Tomio looked at our surroundings and amazement filled his features. His dark eyes fell on me and swept me from head to foot, touching my shoulders, my face, then pulling me into a hug. “We’re alive.”

  “Yes, and we need to find everyone else.” I squeezed him back then released him. Until I’d seen Georjie, Targa, and Ryan in the flesh, breathing and with a pulse, nothing else mattered.

  It didn’t take long. We followed the sound of voices.

  I stumbled over Ryan’s backpack as we headed in their direction. Rooting through it, I found the box for the ghost-steel blade— crushed—a pair of running shoes, a t-shirt and boxers. I pulled on the clothes and slung the pack over my shoulder.

  All three of the others were together in the divot; Georjie had her hands on Ryan’s side, checking him over as he stood patiently. He looked unharmed now. Targa looked up as we approached.

  “You’re here,” She ran her hands through her wet hair, twisting it into a rope. “We were about to come find you. What happened? All I saw was colored reflections against the clouds and a crazy explosion of light so bright I could hardly look at it. I climbed the cliff and then followed Georjie’s voice. Where’s Nero?”

  “He’s dead. The ghost steel hurt him, but it was an orb that killed him. It went straight through him, right in front of me.” I told them what I’d done, what I’d seen, then took a closer look at Ryan’s side. “Georjie fixed you, I see.”

  Ryan nodded, but his expression was flat and his complexion waxy. He didn’t say anything. In the very early morning light, with only a hint of light on the eastern horizon, his pupils appeared flat black. It was a subtle change, and yet nothing could have made him look less like Ryan than the absence of firelight in his eyes.

  Georjie looked me over, checking my back again, and healing my fingertips where the ghost steel had blistered me “I couldn’t heal him at first. It was the strangest thing. The cut refused to mend. It was so totally foreign to me, and it seemed to be getting worse, as if the blade was still there, cutting into his flesh.” She shot a look of compassion at Ryan and put a hand on his shoulder. “I really thought you were going to die in front of me. Then the world was full of color and you healed.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. Easy as buttoning up a shirt.”

  “That was the moment I went from mage to natural.” Ryan’s gaze swept to me and Tomio. “But you didn’t go natural. I can see it in your eyes. You still have fire.”

  It was true. We did, and Georjie shouldn’t have been able to heal my fingertips either, but she had. Whatever power the ghost-steel had had over magi had vanished along with the Source Fire.

  Ryan rubbed a hand hard over the top of his head, then gave a bitter laugh. “Well, I suppose I would have lost it anyway, even if I hadn’t been carrying an idle. It’s the adopted who inhe
rit. Whoever or whatever the Source Fire was, it has a sense of humor.”

  I wanted to share everything I’d learned, but a bigger desire to keep it to myself for a while won. It was too big for me to put into words, and I didn’t feel ready to share it. I was tired.

  “What about you?” I looked at Targa. “Everything okay?”

  “You mean am I still pregnant? Yes.” The siren grinned. “I told you, a bit of running and jumping isn’t enough to shake them loose. But, as fun as its been, you will want to get back to your kind. You’ll have fallout to deal with. And, I need to get back to Antoni, I have some explaining to do.”

  “And you’ll be wanting to get back to Lachlan.” I smiled at Georjie, watching as she inspected Targa. She nodded as she moved to Tomio, checking him over with the attention of a master artist. Any little scratch or bruise eased away under her deft hands, any invisible ache or pain we pointed out was quickly dealt with.

  We climbed out of the divot and crossed the field, looking at the flattened foliage. It was a bit like Basil’s photographs of Tunguska, only in reverse.

  “I could fix all this,” Georjie said, looking at the broken trees between us and the campground. “It would take some time, but I could have it back to normal in a matter of hours.”

  “I think we should leave it,” I ventured, when no one responded. “People will have noticed the comet, but that it was going instead of coming. They’ll want to figure out what happened. They never will, but if we leave the evidence, it’ll give them something to document.”

  “They’ll think it’s a crop circle,” said Tomio. “It’ll become a tourist attraction until it grows up again.”

  Georjie let out a breath. “I wouldn’t mind leaving it, to be honest, if only for selfish reasons. I’m exhausted.”